Lake District Meet March 2016

The Lakes Meet had existed in my mind as something to viewed with indifference; an indifference that at times became something approaching mild distaste and at other times went somewhat further down that sort of line.

The Lakes, for me, had become synonymous with RAIN, COLD and GROTTY DIFFS at Shepard’s Crag. This is an unfortunate viewpoint, but not one that experience had had a chance to shake. On the contrary, the last couple of years had deeply ingrained this into my psyche. (Alert: this means something different in the non-climbing world! - look it up!)

However, one thing was keeping a positive spin on it all. This was St. Bees, somewhere the club had not been to, as far back as I know. St Bees is hailed as the place to go in order escape the mid-lakeland downpours and as home of sunny gold-red sandstone sport and bouldering. The pictures looked they weren’t even taken in the UK, never mind the Lakes! I was well psyched. (Back to climbing terminology)

Not very many other people were though apparently. Four of committee had bailed and the total number of people on the meet was 10.

So off we set, me and Charlie up front with Ali as the driver for us for the first time.  Girl count was low, just me and Charlie, but as we were in charge that wasn’t something we were too concerned about. Our plan of action was simple: NO SHEPARD’S CRAG. 

‘Don’t hit Katie’s Corner’ we advised as Ali slowly swung round the engineering building, ‘or that one. Or that. Just don’t hit anything.’ Helpful committee instructions.

However, this become somewhat less funny when later, at a motorway junction Ali couldn’t decide whether he was turning off or not and rather terrifyingly wavered until past the very last moment. I don’t think he quite hit the curb as he swerved off rightwards with a dramatic lurch...

We arrived, still alive, in Coniston and after a false start up the wrong track, the far-too-steep-and-pot-holey track, we made it up the marginally-less-steep-and-pot-holey track, narrowly avoiding sheep, sheer drops and punting walkers.

Jack Knight was waiting for us there, and despite the late hour, it was nearly midnight, we light a fire and had a beverage or two before bedtime.

The 7am alarm felt unearthy-ly early! However, I am very impressed to report that everyone was out and that the bus was leaving by 9.05! Only 5 minutes off our optimistic time goal.

The sat-nav, for some reason, decided to take us over some fairly high altitude hills. This meant they were snow-covered. This in turn meant that the journey was slow and fairly nerve-wracking. We didn’t quite start skidding uncontrollably into snow-heaped verges. Only a little.

Remy got serious snow-envy and spent the journey nursing his ever-growing bitter disappointment that he couldn’t go winter climbing.

An hour and 20 minutes later we parked up next to some lovely looking cows busy nom-ing silage in their barn, and set off for the coastline with everything in tow. Trad racks, doubles, singles and boulder pads. The whole lot. Remy insisted on trad racks despite the fact that at this ‘sport crag,’ the trad routes, as they tend to at predominantly bolted crags, each had less than 3 ascents on UKC… never a good sign. 

I say ‘everything.’ I actually mean everything sans Bail Bag.

Where was Bail Bag?

You might well ask. The question certainly brings Remy’s questionable past history with said bag back to the surface.

Bail Bag was snugly tucked up in Remy’s under the stairs gear cupboard back in Leicestershire.

#voteron …oh wait.

After I did some punting and couldn’t locate the descent for a while, we finally found ourselves down on the beach slipping and sliding over wet slimy boulders. 

Like this..

We were in optimal Bail Bag-usefulness territory. Ali fell over and bruised his bum. Mo fell over and bruised his knee even more badly. I fell over and hurt my elbow. Adam fell over and hurt his ankle. Remy, Toby and just about everyone else either fell over or very nearly did at least once. The Bail Bag’s absenteeism was becoming steadily more noticeable. Luckily, for various reasons that Harry and Jim might remember only too well, I had an excess of Paracetamol and Ibuprofen, not to mention Codine to dole out.

Punting aside we got loads of climbing done. 

St. Bees looking beautiful.

...Ah that would have been a nice thing to write. 

The recent rain had sadly caused a lot of seepage and rendered all the sport totally unclimbable…even by Paddy’s low, low, standards of acceptable rock/conditions/gear/everything. He tried to climb a route with Remy (who else!) and succeeded in pulling a head-sized hold off right after the first bolt and found himself back on the ground rather sooner than anticipated.

‘I did tell you Sandstone explodes when at all wet.. and I’m not a geologist!’ commented Jack. 

With visions of bolts coming out of exploding rock, the two adventerous souls abandoned their optimistic attempt and spent the day falling off V1’s instead.

That’s what we all did to be fair, even Chris. He seemed to think this was a bad thing, but then he’d never been bouldering outdoors before. I've no shame in saying it’s basically all I ever do when bouldering outside! V1’s are hard outside.

Charlie crushing V1's

Toby crushing more V1's on the other side of the arete

There were some good problems though and we spend a relaxing day potting about on them, lying in the sun, boulder-hopping along the coast in search of Puffins and doing the occasional hard send of a V1. 

Mince Factor: High

Chris did a V3 which was perhaps the most notable achievement. Then he topped that with a V5! Me and Charlie got some heel-hook action going, while Paddy and Remy swarmed up grotty green chimneys and ruined their new ULMC font hoodies. 

All about the heel hook on the V3

More Heel Hook action in the sun.

There were varying degrees of commitment and effort, probably with Chris at one end, loving life in the complete absence of ropes...

V6 top-out of the V3..

.. and Ben at the other: ‘I don’t like bouldering.’ 

I think he climbed a total of one problem and spent the rest of the time looking extremely unimpressed at the complete lack of gear that bouldering required. 

Club team send of St. Bees!

That evening, Toby made a lovely warm fire and we all sat in the sitting room. Our small number meant we could actually all engage in the same conversation for a change. We discussed the merits of geography as life-learning, our opinions on faith schools (strong and not positive), religion (ditto, even more so) how I can’t science, Medieval peasants and Paddy held forth on dyneema, fall factors and various other pieces of highly technical climbing information.

Paddy: Technical gear info nerd/Punter

 Sunday morning sunshine at 8.55am found us out of the hut, van packed and ready to go. Another very impressive effort!

We decided on Raven Crag today, another new place for the club. Luckily I'd had a last minute panic that St. Bees might, for some unknown reason, be awful and had packed the trad gear anyway, so we now had options.

Most people were very psyched to multi-pitch so this was perfect. Psyche was high. Remy jumped on an HS called Remergence with Ben seconding, Toby, Ali and Mo got stuck into a 3 star VDiff and Paddy and I took on the classic of the buttress, Bilbery Buttress, a lovely VS 4c made up of lovely three crack pitches (no jams needed!) which we alternate led.

The day went well for everyone, Ali and Toby both refined or learnt multi-pitch skills, swinging leads on their route. Remy topped out Remergence successfully, and Paddy and I made the wise choice not to get on a route behind a group of three Oxford students (punt level = high). Instead we nearly got on the second pitch of a E5.   

Luckily, we realised our error and enjoyed one of the all-time best multi-pitch routes I have climbed, Pluto, HVS 5a. After I’d conquered a sustained corner crack, Paddy got scared on a wonderfully airy, gearless traverse! He learned to place micro-nuts in anger and kept his head, getting through the hard section, along an incredibly awkward knee traverse (I could put feet on but Paddy couldn’t bunch up like that!) to the ledge. I then led the sustained 5a pitch. 5a indeed!? 5b at least! And route-finding was a bitch! It was awesome though, definitely one to get on if the club goes back there.

And this is the view!

I must now come to what will no doubt be the painful heart of the this whole weekend for one soon-to-be Captain. I feel I must call it ‘The Story of Remy.’ This is because, much like a story where an improbably sequence of events takes place for the amusement of the reader…. Well I will begin: 

 The Story of Remy

Remy, deciding that today would be the day he finally got some hard climbing done after months of bad weather, was super psyched for some Raven Crag HVS’s, and after the HS, moved on to Bilbery Buttress next. He quickly moved off Bilberry Buttress. Rapidly, in the form of a fall from the first hard section of crack. Hanging a couple of centimetres off the ground he looked rather surprised. ‘I don’t know what happened there. I just forgot I was climbing.. lost concentration!’

Pulling the ropes, he made it to the second pitch. There from my vantage point, belaying Paddy, I observed the same proceedings unfold a second time. Remy on the crack, Remy off it again, Remy swinging around inches above Ben’s head. I heard later that the fall, in pulling Ben upwards, also tugged off a sling, which was serving as the only piece of belay gear Remy had placed for Ben.

A far cry from Mr. Remy-three-tree-belay..!

#voteron… oh wait!

Then, after sitting at the belay in despair for a while, Remy discovered that a nut was stuck. It was really stuck. It was in fact 50 minutes worth of forceful nut-keying stuck.

Ben helped too, while Remy sat there sadly, head in his hands until it was his turn to bash some more dents into the nut with a nut-key and a hex.

Nut finally salvaged, they'd both had enough and opted for a receivable abseil descent. Of course, you know what I’m going to say next. Yep, the abseil proved to not be so retrievable after all and Remy had to climb back up and unstick it.

Lowering his aspirations, Remy chose a Severe to Climb with Mo. What could go wrong here? Nothing. Nothing that is, apart from the two guidebooks saying different things about the route, not finding the belay ledge, getting lost in ‘an endless series of ledges,’ retreating, ‘down-climb-leading’ (whatever that is) and finally running out of time and having to ab off.

Poor Remy. Thankfully that is the end of ‘The Story of Remy’. On the plus side, he didn’t loose any gear…

Meanwhile, a few people had been off single-pitching at Raven Crag East, a conveniently close single pitch crag. Charlie and Adam, more keen for single-pitch had been there, and Chris, choosing the lesser of two evils involving rope, had joined them.

Here is their day according to Charlie:

After leaving the keen multi-pitchers at their crag, I headed off to the single pitch venue with two of the clubs well known mincers, Adam and Chris – I was left wondering how much I was actually going to get done! Upon reaching the crag we were the only people there, and made the most of it by jumping on the first route of the day, a severe, which Chris and Adam both seconded.

By the time we had topped out and come back down University of Birmingham Mountaineering Club had arrived and set off on some of the routes, so we were left to do whatever was free.

Having hurt his ankle (again!) the day before, Adam decided he was happy to bask in the sunlight for the rest of the day and became chief photographer.

After climbing another route (Baskerville, VS 4c) without too much issue, after a considerably longer lunch than usual I decided to get on Rowan Tree Grove, HVS 4c. Surprised at the minimal freak out factor, I got ready to get on a second HVS, The Chopper, resisting the peer pressure from Chris and Adam encouraging me to go for the E1 with ‘minimal protection’ – not a good choice for a first E1!

 

Charlie sending hard

Just as I was about to start, Ben appeared with tales of Remy falling off a VS twice and almost decking out...an interesting first multi-pitch experience for him I can imagine! I managed the HVS without too many problems, although the run-out for the first 6m was pretty spicy!

Chris seconding hard

Upon coming back down, Adam and Ben announced they were going to the pub, so me and Chris packed up and headed over to see what was happening with the others. Ellie and Paddy were on the final pitch of their route, Ali and Toby were just packing up their bags, and Remy was, in his own words, ‘down-climb leading’ the first two pitches of his route due to time constraints!

Now that the sun had disappeared behind the lovely snowy mountains, it was getting pretty chilly, so, unexcited at the prospect of waiting in the cold for the others for the next half an hour, we all headed down to the pub to meet Adam and Ben. Sitting in a Hiker’s Bar with a glass of Crabbies is not a bad end to a weekend!

Thanks Charlie :) 

Epics aside, Raven Crag, we all agreed, was great. It reminded me a lot of Bwlch Y Moch at Tremadog, lovely rock, quality 3 pitch routes at a reasonable grade and it even had incredible views over Langdale and beyond to snowy mountain peaks. 

Lovely views across Langdale

It was the perfect crag for the club that day, and it’s great that now more people are comfortable multi-pitching. Despite his ‘punter’ status, I would genuinely trust Paddy’s competency in leading a multi-pitch group now.

One thing though Paddy, when making a belay: shit cam + shit sling + good sling < TREE!

The weather had been incredible too, beautiful clear blue skies and SUN! It hadn’t been cold, wet and I’d not had to go within sight of a grotty Diff. It seems the Lakes does have some less dire climbing experiences to offer…perhaps I should consider revising my opinion!

Finally, I leave you with a few Mo Moments:   

This is Mo.

Mo easts pitta bread spread with Himmus on the OUTSIDE. In response to out voiced our collective displeasure and attempted stern re-education: ‘old Habits die hard.’

Mo boulders in a harness ‘for those hard ascents’ .. or something… I’ve no idea why he had a harness on in the first place actually now I think about it!

Mo, at the service station at the end of the trip: ‘It’s no coincidence that ‘IF’ is in the middle of ‘LIFE’’

Thank you for a great trip everyone, I really enjoyed it, you were all good fun and I may even kind of like the Lakes now!

                     Photos from Charlie (taken by various people) and Ben :)